Anna-Marie McLemore - The Weight of Feathers

Lace dabbed a sponge over the woman’s eyelids, pretending she was still working so she could look. She made out the vane of a feather, the thick central shaft. The barbs looked like enormous eyelashes, spiny with too much mascara, then dusted with the palest face powder.

She blew gently on the woman’s eyelid, to seem like she was helping her mascara dry. But she moved so her breath skimmed past the woman’s temple, and down toward the hair against her neck.

A mist of white powder broke loose. It smelled like raw bread dough.

Flour. The open bag of cake flour was for covering their feathers.

Lace reached out a brush to the plume, letting a little flour frost the bristles. She held the brush so lightly the woman wouldn’t feel it. The feather gave, and the hair around it parted, showing the root.

The feather’s dark shaft vanished into the woman’s head like a vein. It was growing out of her skin.

Lace looked around at the wings on the Corbeaus’ backs, searching for black feathers. She couldn’t find any. Not where one wing met the other. Not at the edges. Not flashing dark between the eyespots.

Those wings, all peacock feathers, no black, left her lost in dark water, trying to make out the trail of her own air bubbles to show her the way to the surface.

The black feathers the wind brought the Palomas didn’t come from their wings. They came from the Corbeaus’ bodies. The stories her family told their children were as much truth as warning.

Lace’s heart felt dry as a pomegranate shell, all the fruit picked away. Her fingers worried at her sleeve, wanting to scratch the feather burn off even if it left her bleeding.

The only thing that stopped her was the truth, sliding its fingers onto her throat.

Unless the Corbeau boy declared her forgiven, she could dig her nails into her arm all she wanted. The wound would heal, and the mark would show up again, like a feather growing back among his hair.

Faute de grives, on mange des merles.

In want of thrushes, one eats blackbirds.

Eugenie followed Cluck, wiping blush and eye shadow off her hands. “You don’t think I can help?”

“You’ve never done it before,” Cluck said.

“Fine. You can do it.”

Cluck couldn’t have made up one of the performers to save his life, and Eugenie knew it. The only time he’d ever handled makeup was to cover a bruise Dax gave him, and even that he’d done badly.

“ Et alors? ” Eugenie stood in front of him. “What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “What happened to Margaux?”

“She just left a message. She said she’s going to see some friends in Hanford.”

“Great,” Cluck said.

“So what now?” Eugenie said.

Cluck dug his fingers into his hairline. “Just let me think, okay?”

Eugenie glanced past him, toward the girl he’d left holding the makeup brushes. “You’re distracted.” Her words ended in a laugh, teasing, not reprimanding.

He didn’t look where Eugenie was looking, not wanting to prove his cousin’s point. And if he looked at Lace again, her face thin and tired, he’d think too much about her and too little about the performers with their unpainted faces. He’d want to turn her over to his youngest aunt, who was always trying to feed people, or let her sleep in the blue and white trailer until the pale, dull film of IV medications fell away.

But there was a kind of intensity in her eyes, a look like she’d pinched herself until she came out from under the morphine. It gave him hope that her coming here was about more than an apology held in that paper bag and watermelon rind. This hope, that she was here not to explain herself but for him, slid into his hand like a found penny.

The place where his feathers touched the back of his neck felt hot. “I am not distracted,” he said. He’d turned his back to that girl so he wouldn’t look at her, so the way her dress brushed the back of her knees wouldn’t make him forget how little time he had until the show started. “I’m thinking.”

“I doubt it.” Eugenie’s smile was pinched and smug. “Not with your petite copine here.”

“I do not have une petite copine, here or anywhere else. I’m trying to figure out how we’re gonna get through tonight.”

Eugenie nodded once, looking past him again. “How about her?”

“Clémentine?” he asked. His cousin was good with color. Meticulous. But that made her slow. If he let her do the makeup, they’d have to start the show at midnight. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No.” Eugenie pushed on his shoulder until he faced where she looked. “ Regarde. ”

The girl stood where he’d left her, hands still full of brushes. But instead of just holding them, she leaned over his cousin, sweeping eye shadow onto her brow bone.

She’d called him gitano like it was a curse, like she would never go near him or his family for their Romani blood. But now she’d planted herself among all the noise and the lights, and with every move of her hands she looked more like she belonged here.

Dios los cría y ellos se juntan.

Birds of a feather, fly together.

“Have you made me beautiful?” the woman asked.

Lace added a last dusting of loose powder. “You’re done.”

The woman turned to the mirror. Lace had evened out her skin tone, flushed her cheeks, painted her eyes mint green to match her dress.

“ Magnifique .” The woman tried to put her cheek to Lace’s. Lace’s pulling away didn’t discourage her. The woman kept little more than an inch of space between their faces, and kissed the air.

Lace flinched away. She shook off the scent of the flower crown, the clean smell of wet marjoram.

Cluck stood in front of them both, arms crossed. “Clémentine.” He looked at the pale-haired woman.

“She’s very good, non? ” the woman said.

He looked at Lace.

Clémentine got up and crossed the yard, her feet imprinting the damp earth. She was almost as tall as Cluck. When she was sitting, Lace couldn’t tell. Now that she was walking, Lace saw her wide, rounded shoulders supporting those wings. She looked made of white sand clay, the statue of some lost goddess.

The hollow space in Lace’s stomach grew hot and tight. She didn’t like how many forms this family took. The boy her cousins called chucho . One woman, red-haired and small, and another, solid and pretty as a vinyl-bodied doll. All growing those black feathers.

Her mother had warned her about that. “You can never tell,” she said. “None of them look the same because they mate with anything.”

“Do you want a job?” Cluck asked.

That snapped her away from watching Clémentine. “What?” she asked.

“Do you already have a job?” he asked. “Or school? Some of the schools here run year-round, right?”

“No. I mean, no, I’m not in school, but…”

“Then do you want a job?”

“Doing what?”

“What you just did,” he said. “Six nights and weekend afternoons. Eight shows a week. Replace my flake cousin.”

“I’m not part of your family,” Lace said.

“And?” He dropped his hands, slid them into his pockets.

She studied the shape of his fingers in the pocket lining. In this light, standing like he was, he looked like an old sepia photograph, with his brown hair and eyes, his white shirt and brown pants. It made him seem printed instead of real, like Lace could reach out and crumple him, let the wind take him. But then she’d wear his mark forever.

“I thought you only hired family,” she said.

“Who told you that?”

She stopped herself. The Palomas knew more about the Corbeaus than anyone except the Corbeaus themselves. If Lace wanted to pass herself off as a local, she’d have to forget anything she knew that an Almendro girl wouldn’t.